WADA welcomes latest Court of Arbitration for Sport decisions

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) welcomes the decisions of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) issued today (1 February) in 12 disciplinary cases against athletes that stem from the WADA-commissioned investigation conducted by Prof. Richard McLaren into institutionalized doping in Russia.

CAS agreed with the reports issued by Prof. McLaren and the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), on behalf of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), and pursued allegations of anti-doping rule violations (ADRVs) against the 12 Russian athletes, concluding that these athletes “participated in and/or benefited from anabolic steroid doping programs and benefited from specific protective methods” between 2012 and 2013.

CAS found that the violations were committed as part of a centralized doping scheme and these rulings confirm an earlier CAS decision in the case of another Russian athlete, Anna Pyatykh, which was also brought forward by the AIU based on McLaren evidence in 2017.

WADA Director General Olivier Niggli said: “These decisions come as welcome news for athletes, anti-doping organizations, WADA and all others around the world who care about clean sport. This should serve to reassure athletes that a lot of work is being conducted behind the scenes by various organizations that are committed to ensure that justice is rendered. It reinforces the importance of ensuring that due process is followed and that evidence is carefully presented.

“I congratulate the AIU and IAAF for successfully bringing these cases forward. It is vitally important now that the hard work continues for the good of all athletes across a range of sports. This creates an important precedent that will be used in future cases.

“This highlights also, once again, just how important the successful retrieval of the analytical data from the former Moscow Laboratory by WADA last month is for clean sport and reinforces the decision taken by the WADA Executive Committee (ExCo) on 20 September 2018 to reinstate as compliant the Russian Anti-Doping Agency under strict conditions, including access to the data. This large amount of data, which would not have been retrieved without that September ExCo decision, is currently being verified and assessed and, if found to be authentic, will be used to bring forward more cases against those who cheated.”